rainbows and pipe cleaners

friday we had our first group of americans come down for the weekend. its three middle aged men from mates church in st. louis. they came to move everything into the medical clinic so we can have our first medical team come down in a few weeks. its interesting to have other people here. for the most part they've been over on the other side of the compound so we haven't interacted much. but meal times are different. i dont have to cook dinner or wash dishes though so thats a perk. they tell a lot of stories and thats kind of cool. they mostly talk to each other &about people or things back home. 

one of the guys has been to haiti quite a few times before i believe. he seems to know quite a bit about it anyway. he told me a story last night about being on a medical team right after the earthquake in 2010 and the following cholera epidemic. his team was traveling from one place to another in the country &were running late because some people had overslept. they were in the middle of no where with several duffle bags of IVs, a nurse or two, and an EMT. all the sudden there were about 30 people walking down the street carrying a man on a stretcher who had cholera. if they had left on time that man would have died. but they just happened to be in the right place at the right time &saved his life. all it takes to cure cholera is clean water. 10,000 people died when all they needed was clean water. he also told me how there were so many dead bodies that they had to dig trenches, place the bodies there, and burn them. one man was too large to fit in the trench so they had to break his legs to fit him in the ground. i could do a lot of things to help people. i could never burn another human beings body on the side of a road.

 it still amazes me that 45 minutes away in Miami, people are driving $100,000 cars and living in million dollar condos on the beach and 10,000 people died because they didn't have clean water. americans could really use a rude awakening in my opinion. i understand that "we work for what we have" and "we built ourselves from the ground up." but we hurt a lot of people in the process and we stopped caring about a lot of people we left behind. if stories like those don't break your heart, i pity the black heart you have. and if that offends you, tough. i won't apologize. God created us all equally and loves us all equally. every living human being DESERVES to have basic human needs. and if you know people are out there living without those things &you chose to do nothing about it, shame on you. 

our bible study friday night was AWESOME. paul taught the story of Noah, or Noyeh as they kept correcting him. they all know the stories of the bible really well. they have NO clue what the stories mean. so this bible study is geared at teaching the significance of the stories. this week we focused on God's promise. so for our craft we painted rainbows on paper plates and glues crepe paper streamers on the back. we hung them all up downstairs &the girls are SO proud of them. they look awesome. i really really love this. 

saturday morning Paul &Kate took the march &april birthday girls to the pool. they invited me to go but i figured the girls would like to have some time with just paul &kate. I stayed at the house and had craft time with the girls still here. we made jewelry out of pipe cleaners. it was a hit! they loved it! they're still wearing what they made yesterday. there were bracelets, rings, crowns, belts, earrings, glasses, headbands, everything. it was awesome. they even asked me this morning if we could get them back out &make some more. the girls were strangely good yesterday. it was amazing. no one really cried, there were no screaming fits, very little hitting or pouting. amazing. 

devotions last night were hilarious. Nelson, 3 years old and the only boy we have, didn't know the words to one of the songs so he was very loudly making up his own noises. the he crawled under the table &took his pants off &kept singing. we were trying so hard not to laugh because their devotions are supposed to be a serious thing but i laughed so hard i cried. they were all singing so loud. 

this morning we made a banner to hang up for a team thats coming to paint the house tomorrow. the girls drew flowers all over it &i cut out some letters that say "welcome to HOH." they lost interest pretty quickly but thats okay. sundays are kind of crazy because there are so many people here and we just play all day after church. 

not sure ill ever quite get used to drinking warm wine while sitting in the sun for communion. burns every time haha now I'm going to take a nap &play for the afternoon. its gonna be another busy week with plenty to do!